This is all covered in my swap thread, but I wanted to post up a thread all on its own devoted to making these work, and work well, with your 3rd gen. These really clean up the engine bay, and you might as well do them if you're already swapping an LS1 into your car.


First off, the coolant bottle.

The tricky thing with the coolant bottle/battery tray, is that on a 3rd gen, there is a fender brace right below the stock battery tray. This brace helps keep the fender from wobbling around in the wind when you're driving, so it is important that you don't remove it from the car. It poses a small problem when using the 4th gen coolant bottle though, because they hang down low and hit the brace, causing it to not sit flush on the battery tray.

The solution to this is simply relocating the fender brace. I found a hole in the frame that was pre-existing, so this mod requires no drilling.

1) remove the bolt holding the brace onto the frame, loosen the bolt holding it to the fender so you can pivot it

2) look approx. 12" to the rear of the bolt that was holding the brace onto the frame. You will see another hole in the frame, you're going to use this to mount the brace and it will give the coolant bottle enough clearance to sit properly on the battery original battery tray

3) you will notice that the brace needs to be a bit shorter in length now that you're moving it to a different hole on the frame. Pivot the brace to the new hole and hold it against the frame while you mark with a Sharpie how much shorter it needs to be. Put the brace in a vice, pinching down at your mark you just made, and bend it at a 90* angle. Then, take a drill and drill a new hole in the brace so you can mount it on the frame at its new location

4) re-install the brace in the new location

5) You will need to cut a hole in the battery tray to fit around the bottom portion of the coolant bottle. There's really no art to this, it's not visible so making it 100% perfect isn't really important.

6) I found that I had to drill new holes for actually mounting the coolant bottle/battery tray also. You may or may not have to, but I did.






This shows how the brace fits in the new location with respect to the coolant bottle. My finger in the top right corner of the photo shows where the brace mounted originally. You can see that it is now mounted about 12" to the rear of the stock location.



Another shot from the back, showing how I bent the brace and drilled a new hole in it.












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Now onto the washer fluid reservoir. This one is a little more tricky but it's not bad at all.


*This applies to Camaros, I'm not sure how the Firebird guys mount there,s someone may feel the need to add to this, as there is actual sheet metal covering the area where the bottle will go, making it much more difficult to do this mod on a Firebird. I know it can be done as there are a number of people here who have done it already.*



First off I will start by saying that there is one main problem with the way this piece fits in the nose of a 3rd gen. On a 4th gen, the bottle mounts directly to the front side of the frame. You can't do this with a 3rd gen, because the back side of the bottle will hit the lower support brace for the hood latch. This is how you can solve the problem:



1) remove the lower hood latch brace from the car

2) take a saw or whatever kind of cutting tool you have on hand, and cut a portion of the brace off like in the following picture (the portion cut off is on the bottom side of it in the picture):




3) the cut you just made will let the top of the washer bottle clear the brace

4) now, you still can't mount the bottle directly to the frame, it would still be hitting the hood latch brace, but what you will be doing is going to fix this also

5) find a piece of plastic or rubber approx 1" thick (you'll know how wide it needs to be when you put the bottle in the nose of the car, because it's going to be sitting in there a couple inches off the frame, and you can push it towards the frame but be gentle as to not break it). I used the black piece of plastic that is used to secure the battery to the stock battery tray. It is a trapezoid shaped piece, I cut it in half and used a sander to smooth the two pieces to make two rectangular piece. Drill a hole in each piece, and drill two holes in the frame, one on each end of the bottle so you can slide a bolt through to fasten the bottle to the frame. The two pieces of plastic or rubber are going to be spacers that will keep the bottle about an inch off the frame and allow it to sit properly.

6) You will need to cut the connector off for the bottle and splice more wire to the two ends so it will reach the bottle's new position. You will also need to get a longer piece of hose, because the stock hose won't reach either




Photos to show what I mean:


This is how the bottle will sit off the front of the frame before you put a spacer in between





With the spacers installed and the bolts mounted

 

More photos of the washer bottle:









Here you can see why you need to notch out the hood latch support brace









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And finally, the finished product with neither of the big chunky 3rd gen bottles on the fenders, and with a cover over the nose of the car so you don't see the windshield wiper bottle.

 

well done , i have done the coolant tank on several cars . good job on that . wish i coud do washer tank , but i have a TBI/TPI inlet on my car . oh well , good job .

 

Thanks. Unfortunately (Read: fortunately), I couldn't use my stock TPI snorkel intake because it wouldn't let enough air get into the throttle body. So I ditched the whole setup and decided to make my own custom cold air kit with some rubber elbows, 4" intake tube, and some clamps, which is what you see there in the last couple pictures. So now I have room up front on the radiator for the wiper fluid bottle.

 

good job, and i love the nice clean looks, I should try that on my bird here soon, and see how much more difficut it will be in a bird.

 

Nick on your air intake setup you will be sucking in HOT air the way you have it set up. Get with Matt I think he fixed that issue with his setup. Just letting you know in advance

 

I really didn't have any other choices. Leaving a filter under the hood closer to the motor would make it worse. I really don't think I will have issues with hot air because the idle air sensor is built into the MAF which doesn't touch anything. That and the filter will pick up lots of cold air the way I placed it.

 

pics of the coolant bottle? and when you want to fill the washer bottle do you have to remove the whole cover or did you cut a hole. also.. great job! i saw a 4th gen without a front end at a junkyard and saw the washer bottle and thought there was no way that'd fit in a 3rd gen but obviously i didn't have enough interest to make it work.

 

To fill the wiper fluid, all I have to do is remove the nose cover. It is held in by push pins so it only takes a minute to pop it out.


Sorry, here's one of the coolant bottle that is a little better. 4th gen coolant bottles are a coolant overflow tank AND a battery tray all in one.








A better picture of the nose cover:

 

Not critisizing your work, but you can mount the washer bottle without cutting the brace.With the radiator bottle i mounted mine under the battery tray.So no cutting was required.I sectioned the fender brace & put a bend on it to clear the bottle, but i like your idea better.I try to cut a little metal as possible when modding.This way can easily return the car to stock if desired.Some of the pics are missing now, but here's my original thread.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body...her-fluid.html

 

I couldn't find any way around cutting a small portion of the brace off to mount the washer bottle. Then again, my car was originally a TPI car, which used the plastic tunnels behind the grill to push air up into the air box. I'm not sure if your car had that or not? That seemed to be in the way of mounting the bottle lower on the car, which would have allowed me to not have to cut the brace. I didn't want to ditch the plastic tunnels though because they help the radiator get more air into it. All in all, I only cut about half an inch of metal off the brace, nothing that will compromise its integrity.

 

No ducting on mine, but the brace is the same.I softend the plastic with a heat gun & put a bend in the tank.Kinda hard to see in the pic, but it just clears the metal brace.The upper bracket was not an issue since i mounted my tank low enought to clear that.

 

I'll have to try the coolant bottle mod. I already have the bottle, but I didn't know it could be mounted without cutting the battery tray area.

 

I wasn't worried about not going back to stock. I cut a hole for the coolant bottle and the cold air kit. This car will never have another TPI drivetrain, it will be an LSX the rest of its life so I figured I would make it as unique and custom as I felt necessary.

 

Wow, that looks really good BZ28. Any reason not to cut an access hole in the front nose cover so you don't have to remove it? It might look factory if you did it just right.

Nothing like seeing an LSx in a 3rdGen

 

I used the battery hold down bolt on one side & one of the threaded bungs opposite that.To hold up the tray from below.

I just dont dig cutting metal away when there are other ways of acheiving the same purpose, but that's just personal preference though.Its not so much about returning the car to stock, but the option is there for someone else.Were i ever to sell the car.

 

841LE: That is cool, I have never seen anyone do it that way before.



Thanks. I didn't want to cut an access hole because it seemed like a pointless amount of extra work, plus it's cool to have a functioning wiper washer without even knowing it is there. And like I said, it's so easy to fill up, just remove a few push pins and it's right there. Plus, I would have had to do more modifying to get the bottle to mount high enough in order to have the cap right there at the surface of the nose cover. It sits an inch or two below the bottom of the cover the way I did it.

 

Ah...I see. That's cool then - didn't realize it was so low down.

 

Thanks, nothing wrong with your way though.It just that cutting metal away scares me....sometimes!




Yep, same here.
Thats also about as high as you can mount the tank, with more cutting.

 

Nice mod....too bad the wiper fluid container won't work with TPI set ups.

 

sweet!

 

Sorry to bring back this thread but i had a question. It seems like 84 1LE did the coolant bottle/tray w/o cutting or somethign but i dont quite understand how he did his install. Can anyone explain it? Did he just bolt it under the tray?

Im hoping to do this on my firebird so hopefully theres not to much in the way to do it.

 

Its mounted from underneath the batt tray.

 

Did you just bolt it up and adjust that brace? It looks great from the pics youve shown. I dont like cutting anythign either so thats ideal. Hopefully i can get the washer fluid one in my firebird.

 

Not sure what brace, i did have to cut/trim the 4th gen plastic tray to better fit the contours of the 3rd gen batt tray.Plus drill 2 holes for the bolts that hold it up.The filler neck had to be bent to clear the fender.My old thread is floating around the forum somehere.

 

Ill try and search for it tomorrow. Thanks

 

I mounted my washer bottle without cutting anything. Tight fit and it doesn't move, not sure why cutting was involved.

 

It just depends on how you mount it really...

 

I'm assuming because you have an RS (B4C) which doesn't have the grill inserts like on a TPI car that would surround the foglights. With those two pieces in there, you can't go any lower with the washer bottle. It's not like I had to hack anything up severely, you can see that I barely had to trim any metal off of the bracket, and it's hidden so you'd never know I even had to do anything it.




I guess I should post a picture of how it looks finished WITHOUT a rats nest of wiring too...I got in a hurry to make this thread back in the day and I hadn't finished the engine swap. It looks much better when everything is done. I also hid the headlight wiring harness under the driver side fender, but that's a completely different story for another thread.

 

Original question was bout the expansion bottle! Just saying.

 

This is the comment I had quoted, referring to the washer bottle in the front bumper area.

 

Umm no, I have the grill inserts because my car is a TPI car. B4C/1LE is TPI, only difference is it comes in RS package, no fog lights, RS grill, all the panels for z28 TPI engine.

It's a ver tight fit, but all I did was unbolted the hood latch, slipped in the bottle and rebolted it back on, done.

 

Gotcha. I realize it's a tpi car but assumed since it had an RS grill it wouldn't get the inserts for the fog light area.

Regardless, mine didn't fit without trimming the bracket. I tried putting it in there without it being trimmed and it wasn't even close to fitting.

 

I want to do this in the near future. I hate how out of place the coolant and washer bottles look but I like having the windshield washer function.

 

I really like that, BlueZee. Between your work and 84 1LE's, I'm inspired. I hope you don't mind me keeping your thread alive and adding a little about washer tank fitment into Firebirds.

Different than Camaros, Firebirds have a steel "deck" covering the entire front space, and it's not easily removable; it will interfere with mounting the top of the washer tank(if mounting the tank to the upper radiator support), so that deck will have to be modified/cut in two places. I've attached a pic showing where it will have to be cut to accomodate the top of the washer tank, the white paper showing the approximate sizes and shapes of the cuts. Even if the tank were made to fit underneath without cutting the deck, the deck would still have to be cut/drilled for access to fill the tank. Clean cuts, new paint and maybe some molding on the cut edges should make it look nice.

For the coolant tank, on a TPI 'bird, the passenger side has the smog canister and the air cleaner housing, both of which can easily be adjusted to the new tank.

And for people who might wonder(as I did), the washer tank will not interfere with the radiator. Thirdgen 'birds have a plastic "wall" angularly-sloping from the upper radiator support to the bottom of the front bumper cover. The space behind this wall is where air is scooped-up to the radiator. The tank mounts in front of the wall, so there's no interference with airflow to the radiator.

Thanks for the inspiration.

 

Maybe im slow, but i dont get the above pics^^^

You show where it needs to be cut (i think) but then you show the tank laying in some manner that doesnt make sense to me really.

I suppose a pic of it installed on the car would be clearer.

Sorry if im being a PITA but i just got my tanks and was trying to figure out how to mount the washer fluid tank. Another thought i had was making a cover similar to the ones used on the camaro so you could easily remove and install the cover when needed.

 

Could always do it my way...

 

ahh stupid me, i already wrote a thread on this mod for firebirds! ha!

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body...er-bottle.html

 

Thanks!

I like that setup but you have the mount the tank kinda weird.

Maybe ill have to find some new way to do this. lol

 

Another method to mount the washer bottle, post #90.Maybe he has better pics available.
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body...r-fluid-2.html

 

Adrenaline, my second pic is just to show the parts and the approximate position of the tank in relation to the back of the deck. That tank is out of a junkyard car... $6, like-new.

88, thanks for the link to your thread. It looks like you "hung" the tank way below the upper support, rather than bolting it to the upper support like BlueZee did. I'd guess you don't have that plastic panel in place, or you wouldn't be able to mount it that low. And tying it to those cross-rods seems kind of close to the radiator, so hopefully it won't have any negative effects on airflow.

After I pulled the tank, I looked around the junkyard and found a thirdgen Firebird with its front end intact and took it apart to test the fitment of the tank. That's when I saw that it can't be mounted directly to the upper support without cutting the deck like I showed in my pic above.

But after playing around with this a little more, it looks a lot simpler than I thought. Mounting it about an inch below the upper support with a couple of hanger brackets, then cutting a 3" hole in the deck, and that should do it... probably even simpler than on a Camaro, and the Firebird's stock deck makes the perfect cover.

 

Do you have any pictures of this? Curious how yours was different than the others.

Are all 4th gen coolant bottles the same? '93-'02 V6 and LS1? Do the trays require any modifications to fit those optima's?

 

Cool Mod!

 

This is the method I did when I did my swap a year or so ago.
I marked the places which needed to be "softened" and took a heat gun to it and molded it. I can take pictures if ya want. Came out really well. I also agree with not really enjoying cutting up my car if i dont need to.
However, props to you Bluez! I would of never thought about installing small rubber spacers like you. Maybe I missed it but did the overflow tank get in the way of the battery at all?

 

heat gun for the win.

 

BlueZee28, I just commented on your old '09 thread inquiring about the mod and then discovered this by changing my search from reservoir to bottle...awesome mod! I have plans to cut & modify the hood latch brace and weld additional bracing to mount a FMIC but guess I'll look into this mod first to see how they work together. Already have a hole where battery tray was from old IC set up so I'm guessing I can just egg out the hole for the radiator reservoir. Looks great!

 

No, the overflow tank doesn't interfere with the battery at all.

 

thanks for the info, I plan on putting my 4th gen coolant bottle in tomorrow.

 

Let us know how it comes out!

 

I got the overflow tank in, but I need the hose that runs from the radiator to the bottle itself. I ordered the overflow bottle new from rockauto but it wasn't included and can't seem to find it anywhere. Any ideas??